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The next bubble to burst? What about Treasuries? Yikes!

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Fools you've known me for a while, or who read my article out yesterday, know I have disdain for the word bubble. I consider it a grossly overused term with misleading undertones that often clouds the greater complexities of what is occurring in the trenches. Nonetheless, just as I I couldn't resist the temptation to employ the term for my article above about the imminent resumption of the bull market for metals, so too could I not resist posting this thought-provoking Bloomberg article suggesting the market for Treasuries could be the next bubble. We've all seen discussions of the topic before ... the "what hapens when no one wants to buy more of our debt" theoretical disscussions ... but now that Treasury yields have turned negative, the theoretical discusion starts to look al too realistic.

And for more food for thought, consider the duration for which 3-Month Treasuries yielded 0% from the late 1930s to the early 40s. To update the following chart in your head, drop that orange line like a rock from the 5% yield in April of 2007 to zero by late 2008.

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The rally in Treasuries that pushed yields on bills below zero percent this week is adding to concerns that the $5.3 trillion market for government debt is a bubble waiting to burst.

Investors seeking safety from losses in equity and credit markets charged the Treasury zero percent interest when the government sold $30 billion of four-week bills on Dec. 9. A day later three-month bill rates turned negative for the first time since the U.S. began selling the debt in 1929. Yields on two-, 10- and 30-year securities touched record lows this month.

“Treasuries have some bubble characteristics, certainly the Treasury bill does,” said Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., which oversees the world’s largest bond fund. “A Treasury bill at zero percent is overvalued. Who could argue with that in terms of the return relative to the risk?” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.

The 30-year bond returned 23.6 percent since September, including reinvested interest, more than it earned in any one year since gaining 34.1 percent in 1995, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. index data. Treasuries of all maturities gained an average of 11.9 percent this year, compared with a 39 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and a loss of 15.3 percent in Merrill Lynch’s broadest corporate bond index.

Rising Supply

Rising supply of government debt to pay for the bailout of the economy and financial system has done little to damp demand. Treasury Assistant Secretary Karthik Ramanathan said in a speech yesterday in New York that the U.S. may introduce new financing methods to meet borrowing needs of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in the financial year that ends in September.

While supply has increased, rates on three-month bills fell 2.89 percentage points in the last year to 0.01 percent today, after trading as low as negative 0.05 percent on Dec. 9. The rate on four-week bills plummeted from a peak of 5.175 percent on Jan. 29, 2007. The three-month bill yield was unchanged today.

An investor who bought $1 million in three-month bills at the closing rate of negative 0.01 percent on Dec. 9 would realize a loss of $25.56 when the securities mature. Bills are sold at a discount and appreciate to par at maturity.

Even at the low yields, the government received bids for four times the amount of four-week bills it auctioned this week, according to the Treasury.

‘Insatiable Demand’

“There is basically insatiable demand for Treasury bills,” Ira Jersey, a New York-based interest-rate strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “There is a number of reasons for this, not only angst over deflation and what’s going on with risky assets, but there is also just a lot of cash that does not want to take any credit risk.”

Hunger for Treasuries increased as financial companies reported $984 billion of losses and writedowns related to the collapse of subprime mortgages since the start of 2007. The losses froze credit markets and helped send the U.S., Europe and Japan into the first simultaneous recessions since World War II.

Gross said he regrets not buying Treasuries in the past year. “If we went back 12 months and we had known then what we know now, it would have been all invested in Treasuries,” he said in the interview.

David Rosenberg, the chief North American economist at New York-based Merrill Lynch, said last week that demand for Treasuries had reached the “bubble” phase like in technology stocks in 2000 and real estate six years later.

Waive Fees

Record-low yields on government debt have led money-market funds to waive fees to keep returns positive. If the Federal Reserve cuts its 1 percent target rate for overnight loans between banks, as is expected next week by all but two of 56 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, some Treasury fund returns may turn negative, said Peter Crane, president of Crane Data LLC, a research firm in Westborough, Massachusetts.

Treasuries have “absolutely” entered a bubble, said David Brownlee, who oversees $15 billion as head of fixed income at Sentinel Asset Management in Montpelier, Vermont. “There is very little rationality in my mind to bills trading at zero.”

Sentiment among investors in Treasuries turned negative for the first time in four months, according to a JPMorgan Securities Inc. survey of clients. The firm’s weekly index fell to minus 6 on Dec. 8, from this year’s high of 27 a month ago. The figure is the difference between the percentage of investors betting prices will rise and those expecting a decline.

Deflation Speculation

Speculation that the recession will result in deflation, or a prolonged slide in prices, is also driving demand for Treasuries. Consumer prices fell 1 percent in October, the most since records began in 1947, and may drop 1.2 percent in November, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Deflation may worsen the economic downturn by making debts harder to pay and countering the impact of Fed rate cuts. Deflation also makes bonds more valuable, even with yields at record lows.

Treasuries may actually be “fairly valued,” Tony Crescenzi, chief bond strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, said in a report yesterday. Even so, yields will likely rise in mid-January as investors’ focus turns to prospects for an economic recovery, he wrote.

The U.S. pledged $8.5 trillion, more than half of the country’s gross domestic product, to spur lending and limit the damage of the recession.

Economists forecast higher bond yields as those efforts take affect over the next year. The yield on the 10-year note will rise to 3.66 percent by the end of 2009 from 2.67 percent today, according to 50 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. That would result in a loss of 3.88 percent as bond prices decline.

“At some point we are going to get some signal, some indication that this massive policy response is getting some traction,” said Mitchell Stapley, who oversees $22 billion as chief fixed-income officer for Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Fifth Third Asset Management. “The flight out of Treasuries is something that will be breathtaking.”

Fear triggers gold shortage, drives US treasury yields below zero The investor search for a safe places to store wealth as the financial crisis shakes faith in the system has caused extraordinary moves in global markets over recent days, driving the yield on 3-month US Treasuries below zero and causing a rush for physical holdings of gold.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Last Updated: 9:26AM GMT 11 Dec 2008

"It is sheer unmitigated fear: even institutions are looking for mattresses to put their money until the end of the year," said Marc Ostwald, a bond expert at Insinger de Beaufort.

The rush for the safety of US Treasury debt is playing havoc with America's $7 trillion "repo" market used to manage liquidity. Fund managers are hoovering up any safe asset they can find because they do not know what the world will look like in January when normal business picks up again. Three-month bills fell to minus 0.01pc on Tuesday, implying that funds are paying the US government for protection.

"You know the US Treasury will give you your money back, but your bank might not be there," said Paul Ashworth, US economist for Capital Economics.

The gold markets have also been in turmoil. Traders say it has become extremely hard to buy the physical metal in the form of bars or coins. The market has moved into "backwardation" for the first time, meaning that futures contracts are now priced more cheaply than actual bullion prices.

It appears that hedge funds in distress are being forced to cash in profits on gold futures to cover losses elsewhere or to meet redemptions by clients. But smaller retail investors – and perhaps some big players – are buying bullion in record volumes to store in vaults.

The latest data from the World Gold Council shows that demand for coins, bars, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) doubled in the third quarter to 382 tonnes compared to a year earlier. This matches the entire set of gold auctions by the Bank of England between 1999 and 2002.

Peter Hambro, head Peter Hambro Gold, said the data reflects a "remarkable" shift in the structure of the market. The rush to safety reflects a mix of fears about the fragility of world finance and concerns that the move towards zero interest rates could set off an inflationary surge further down the road, and possibly call into question the worth of some paper currencies.

The near paralysis in the "repo" markets may prove to be no more than pre-Christmas jitters as banks square their books.

However, there are some signs that extreme monetary stimulus by the US Federal Reserve and other banks is starting to have unintended consequences.

The Bank of Japan is it is reluctant to cut its rates to zero again because of the damage this causes to the money markets, which serve as a key lubricant of the credit system. The US is now starting to face the same dilemma.

I agree 100%. This is a bubble and will burst like all others. After awhile the deflation protection of US treasuries will be shown as a farce in this environment when investors see 0% nominal returns (and negative real returns), and it becomes obvious that the quantative easing policies of the Fed are massively inflationary in the long term.

Wow, I haven't looked at treasury yields in a while and I can't believe they went that low. Back in Sept they touched that level, but now it's steady. What's the point in buying treasuries? You lose more in commission costs than you get in interest. Just keep it in cash. I would suggest a bank, but if you are dealing with more thank $250k, they might not be the best option.